A stint as publicity officer for Mel's Mobility Scooters involved Mick riding a 20ft high bike wearing tin foil.
It's Hi-De-Hi! crossed with Are You Being Served?, topped with dollops of Spanish sun. My hairdresser confessed that she couldn't bear to watch Benidorm (ITV1), because it showed Brits behaving so badly. For me this is a normal day at work, I thought, and tuned in to see for myself.
Martin's new girlfriend, Brandy (Sheridan Smith), reminded me of all those teenage girls we battle with to remove jewellery and make-up. Their offensive charm comes from the truths they tell that most of us choose to hide. Not surprisingly, Brandy had all the best lines. Dismayed by her hotel room, she announced that it made Anne Frank's attic look like Disneyland.
Praising a couple for their sexual orientation, she proclaimed her love for gay people even though their lives were filled with tragedy: "All your friends dying of the Aids an' that and you enduring a lifetime of persecution." It was so cringeworthy it could have been Borat.
Mick, played by Steve Pemberton without League of Gentlemen costumes or rubber bits, showed paternal affection in what now passes, I suppose, as the modern British family: "Ger in that pool, you're supposed to be on holiday." The repeated endearment from his daughter was "Dickhead", when she was not attending to a child we would once have described as illegitimate.
A stint as publicity officer for Mel's Mobility Scooters involved Mick riding a 20ft high bike wearing tin foil. Credibility and the imagination stretched in equal measure. Meanwhile, like a character in a Carry On film, Martin groped for language to describe female unmentionable bits. But "lady awning" and "flappage" might have made even Kenneth Williams blush.
The highlight was Johnny Vegas, delivering a stand-up stomp as champion of British values: playing by the rules, fighting to win, defending the dream, that sort of thing. Startled tourists hadn't a clue what he was shouting about. But isn't this what made Britain great? I just hope they don't show Benidorm in any country I might visit.
From adults behaving like children on the Costa Blanca to young actors playing oldies, Bugsy Malone-style, in School of Comedy (E4). A brief encounter with Brief Encounter was full of open vowels, wide eyes and lipstick-coated ladies proclaimed their breathy - "I love you, but I'm a woman" - love for each other. Children attempting adult parts for real can doom a school play, but parody works. They were like painted, polished nursery toys coming to life after dark. And not a drop of fake tan in sight.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 19 October 2009
Monday, 12 October 2009
Tune in, switch off - It's dead good viewing
Now I know why Year 11 enjoy science so much. It's the forensics, stupid. The last class I went into had a body on the floor and crime scene levels of activity. I beat a hasty retreat to avoid being fingerprinted. The nation, like the science class, loves a good murder. In Watching the Dead (BBC Four), we were treated to a forensic examination of the TV crime series' enduring popularity.
First under the microscope were the early cop shows. Swab samples rescued from the archives proved that they were about people, conflict and social issues. No figures in white space suits dissecting lumps of butchers' flesh. Just old-fashioned detective intuition. And we all know how accurate that was.
Contributors described scientific methods, from DNA sampling to "vein patterning". I'm so squeamish I look away when Sherlock Holmes produces his magnifying glass.
There was plenty to be squeamish about in Waking the Dead (BBC One) as Dr Eve Lockhart (Tara Fitzgerald) scientifically proved a suicide was a murder, identified the owner of a rotting finger and used something like a metal detector to locate a corpse. I was convinced she could unearth Anglo-Saxon treasure if asked.
But the person who really knew where the bodies were buried was Linda, the Hannibal Lecterish inmate of a high-security psychiatric unit, a mission-oriented killer who manipulated others to do her will. Watch out, Detective Boyd (Trevor Eve). She's not just behind you, she's everywhere around you and she's got a razor blade.
Anne Robinson was preventing crimes in Watchdog (BBC One). Look-alike successor to Esther Rantzen (they must share the same plastic surgeon), the Robinson-Rantzen morph hosed down a spokesman from First Choice holidays.
He faced studio guests complaining about poor hygiene in a Turkish holiday village. There was plenty of drama in the shouting and abuse. It was just like a parents' evening.
The sting for rogue gas fitters was the combination of secret cameras with practical jokes: a Victorian brass band reminded one he was operating to 19th-century rules; a billboard advertised another's lies and deception.
From cam scam to sham scam, it was finally the turn of the audience to be shamed. Fake fraudsters rang a sample of them, offering free TVs in return for delivery costs for which they requested credit card details. Trap snapped, half freely gave the information.
Earlier in the week, I received a similar request from someone pretending to be a colleague from our partner school in Thailand, claiming she'd had her credit card stolen and needing £1,500. So, in jest, I told my finance office to pay her from our international budget.
When finance replied that they'd arranged the transfer, I rushed in, panicking, to be greeted by guffaws. I've passed the details of that scam to Year 11 for forensics and they're on their way over to fingerprint me.
Ray Tarleton
First under the microscope were the early cop shows. Swab samples rescued from the archives proved that they were about people, conflict and social issues. No figures in white space suits dissecting lumps of butchers' flesh. Just old-fashioned detective intuition. And we all know how accurate that was.
Contributors described scientific methods, from DNA sampling to "vein patterning". I'm so squeamish I look away when Sherlock Holmes produces his magnifying glass.
There was plenty to be squeamish about in Waking the Dead (BBC One) as Dr Eve Lockhart (Tara Fitzgerald) scientifically proved a suicide was a murder, identified the owner of a rotting finger and used something like a metal detector to locate a corpse. I was convinced she could unearth Anglo-Saxon treasure if asked.
But the person who really knew where the bodies were buried was Linda, the Hannibal Lecterish inmate of a high-security psychiatric unit, a mission-oriented killer who manipulated others to do her will. Watch out, Detective Boyd (Trevor Eve). She's not just behind you, she's everywhere around you and she's got a razor blade.
Anne Robinson was preventing crimes in Watchdog (BBC One). Look-alike successor to Esther Rantzen (they must share the same plastic surgeon), the Robinson-Rantzen morph hosed down a spokesman from First Choice holidays.
He faced studio guests complaining about poor hygiene in a Turkish holiday village. There was plenty of drama in the shouting and abuse. It was just like a parents' evening.
The sting for rogue gas fitters was the combination of secret cameras with practical jokes: a Victorian brass band reminded one he was operating to 19th-century rules; a billboard advertised another's lies and deception.
From cam scam to sham scam, it was finally the turn of the audience to be shamed. Fake fraudsters rang a sample of them, offering free TVs in return for delivery costs for which they requested credit card details. Trap snapped, half freely gave the information.
Earlier in the week, I received a similar request from someone pretending to be a colleague from our partner school in Thailand, claiming she'd had her credit card stolen and needing £1,500. So, in jest, I told my finance office to pay her from our international budget.
When finance replied that they'd arranged the transfer, I rushed in, panicking, to be greeted by guffaws. I've passed the details of that scam to Year 11 for forensics and they're on their way over to fingerprint me.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 5 October 2009
Spare me the conference's PowerPoint pains
After years as an education conference junkie, I'm clean at last. Addiction-free, I'm able to walk past a hotel without feeling the urge to rush in, pin on a shiny badge and network madly. So please don't make me attend another one - ever. This is the end. My conference days are done.
You see, conferring brings me out in a rash. I feel nauseous at the thought of the ubiquitous round table draped with white cloth and covered with bottled water, mints and slim pads of free paper. I have an irresistible urge to snatch one of the logo-inscripted pens and snap it at the first twist, or else become a doodling delegate - a zombie scribbler, drawing to ease the pain of another PowerPoint presentation.
Yes, I know. I've been spoilt. Wouldn't any teacher gladly sacrifice a day on the classroom floor for the chance of release? I suspect the reason I get so many applications from teachers to attend training events is because it's the nearest thing to a mini-break they can experience without showing their passport.
Their day out will feature a train ride, a smart luxury venue, a free meal that beats the normal pasta pot, and inspiring speeches about how to be, well, inspiring. It's all about vision. A conference without vision would be like Gypsy Rose Lee without her crystal ball. From Prime Minister to Education Secretary, from Ofsted chief to chief officer, the purveyors of platform wisdom proclaim moral purpose over canapes and passion with profiteroles.
But, ungrateful wretch that I am, I'm sick of it. Like Prufrock, I've had too many visions and revisions. Weary of downloading and uploading, I'm imploding and off-loading.
They're also about transformation: like poets, educationalists are now the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
"You will be in the vanguard of your own legacy," the speaker informed us at the last high-profile bash I attended. Just run that past me again - doesn't that mean we're all up our own backsides? Well, most presenters are, for sure.
"You can solve the national financial crisis!" he proclaimed, warming to his theme and glancing in my direction. Who, me? It's bad enough shovelling money into my offspring's bank accounts.
It's the school's ability to teach creativity, he went on to explain. So this will be the solution to all our debts: education, the panacea. I'm numbed into agreement. We can cure it, I mutter, holding coffee in one hand and fizzy water in the other. But, eyeing the cheesecake, the only cost I'm counting comes in calories.
Yet there is now a way of networking without the travel, time and expense. WebEx telephone conferences allow you to sit at your computer, see the presentations on screen, listen to the speeches and join in the discussion. And you can nip off to make a cup of tea while it's all going on and no one will find out.
You can put up your hand to make a comment with the click of your mouse, even sending messages in secret to other delegates. "What the hell's going on?" one late arrival asked me privately on screen. I didn't know either.
It's conferencing, but without the shiny trimmings and long-haul journeys. It takes a fraction of the time and money. It's my vision and I'm sticking to it. Now, pass the pasta pot ...
Ray Tarleton
You see, conferring brings me out in a rash. I feel nauseous at the thought of the ubiquitous round table draped with white cloth and covered with bottled water, mints and slim pads of free paper. I have an irresistible urge to snatch one of the logo-inscripted pens and snap it at the first twist, or else become a doodling delegate - a zombie scribbler, drawing to ease the pain of another PowerPoint presentation.
Yes, I know. I've been spoilt. Wouldn't any teacher gladly sacrifice a day on the classroom floor for the chance of release? I suspect the reason I get so many applications from teachers to attend training events is because it's the nearest thing to a mini-break they can experience without showing their passport.
Their day out will feature a train ride, a smart luxury venue, a free meal that beats the normal pasta pot, and inspiring speeches about how to be, well, inspiring. It's all about vision. A conference without vision would be like Gypsy Rose Lee without her crystal ball. From Prime Minister to Education Secretary, from Ofsted chief to chief officer, the purveyors of platform wisdom proclaim moral purpose over canapes and passion with profiteroles.
But, ungrateful wretch that I am, I'm sick of it. Like Prufrock, I've had too many visions and revisions. Weary of downloading and uploading, I'm imploding and off-loading.
They're also about transformation: like poets, educationalists are now the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
"You will be in the vanguard of your own legacy," the speaker informed us at the last high-profile bash I attended. Just run that past me again - doesn't that mean we're all up our own backsides? Well, most presenters are, for sure.
"You can solve the national financial crisis!" he proclaimed, warming to his theme and glancing in my direction. Who, me? It's bad enough shovelling money into my offspring's bank accounts.
It's the school's ability to teach creativity, he went on to explain. So this will be the solution to all our debts: education, the panacea. I'm numbed into agreement. We can cure it, I mutter, holding coffee in one hand and fizzy water in the other. But, eyeing the cheesecake, the only cost I'm counting comes in calories.
Yet there is now a way of networking without the travel, time and expense. WebEx telephone conferences allow you to sit at your computer, see the presentations on screen, listen to the speeches and join in the discussion. And you can nip off to make a cup of tea while it's all going on and no one will find out.
You can put up your hand to make a comment with the click of your mouse, even sending messages in secret to other delegates. "What the hell's going on?" one late arrival asked me privately on screen. I didn't know either.
It's conferencing, but without the shiny trimmings and long-haul journeys. It takes a fraction of the time and money. It's my vision and I'm sticking to it. Now, pass the pasta pot ...
Ray Tarleton
Tune in, switch off - Hooked on farm frolics
'Been anywhere nice, then?' he offered as his best chat-up line. No wonder it's been lonely on the farm
The happy couple, at a wedding I attended last spring, met in a truly bizarre way. The bride's mother saw the groom-to-be on a reality TV programme and then just happened to recognise him in her local high street the next day. "You'd be perfect for my daughter," she declared, or words to that effect. So from reality to fairytale: they met, married and lived happily ever after. Well, for six months so far. And now Farmer Wants a Wife (Five) is back for a new series.
It's the agricultural version of internet dating, love on a farm by artificial dissemination, and goes like this. Our farmer ploughs his lonely furrow for fifteen hours every day with not a woman in sight. It could be a tragic Hardy novel with only one character. Then, just when he thinks he might have to do something to meet the opposite sex, like get a hobby or join a club, four flighty females drop in all together.
Farmer Derek told presenter Louise Redknapp (a footballer's, rather than a farmer's wife, left) he was so romantic that he expected to fall in love at first sight. Women tried to win him over with flirtatious flounces and saucy suggestions. Derek sized them up as if considering the purchase of his next prize bull. "It's a job to handle her," he whispered. "Been anywhere nice, then?" he offered as his best chat-up line. No wonder it's been lonely on the farm.
The first cull came when he had to dispatch two suitors back to civilisation and keep two, like farm pets, on trial for the week. Part of their prize was sharing the same bed - but without Derek. And they both got high on a tour of the farm when treated to a ride in a hot air balloon.
This was love at first sight for all three. And though dithering Derek eventually chose the wrong girl, the other one forgave him and returned to the nest.
Fortunately, such biological urges were fully explained in The Living Body, (More4) - and all at break-neck speed. Look: out popped a baby and then whoosh, courtesy of computer graphics, we were speeding back up inside the fallopian tubes. It was as psychedelically colourful as a Beatles film. When the budget bites and I can no longer afford science teachers, this will keep Year 9 going until their GCSEs.
We learnt that the world is noisy, bright and smelly for babies. It is for me too. We each have more cells than in the whole of the Milky Way. And we get the equivalent of a new body every 10 years. Well, I'd like my new one next week. But, unlike Derek, I'll stick with my pick on the wife scene.
Ray Tarleton
The happy couple, at a wedding I attended last spring, met in a truly bizarre way. The bride's mother saw the groom-to-be on a reality TV programme and then just happened to recognise him in her local high street the next day. "You'd be perfect for my daughter," she declared, or words to that effect. So from reality to fairytale: they met, married and lived happily ever after. Well, for six months so far. And now Farmer Wants a Wife (Five) is back for a new series.
It's the agricultural version of internet dating, love on a farm by artificial dissemination, and goes like this. Our farmer ploughs his lonely furrow for fifteen hours every day with not a woman in sight. It could be a tragic Hardy novel with only one character. Then, just when he thinks he might have to do something to meet the opposite sex, like get a hobby or join a club, four flighty females drop in all together.
Farmer Derek told presenter Louise Redknapp (a footballer's, rather than a farmer's wife, left) he was so romantic that he expected to fall in love at first sight. Women tried to win him over with flirtatious flounces and saucy suggestions. Derek sized them up as if considering the purchase of his next prize bull. "It's a job to handle her," he whispered. "Been anywhere nice, then?" he offered as his best chat-up line. No wonder it's been lonely on the farm.
The first cull came when he had to dispatch two suitors back to civilisation and keep two, like farm pets, on trial for the week. Part of their prize was sharing the same bed - but without Derek. And they both got high on a tour of the farm when treated to a ride in a hot air balloon.
This was love at first sight for all three. And though dithering Derek eventually chose the wrong girl, the other one forgave him and returned to the nest.
Fortunately, such biological urges were fully explained in The Living Body, (More4) - and all at break-neck speed. Look: out popped a baby and then whoosh, courtesy of computer graphics, we were speeding back up inside the fallopian tubes. It was as psychedelically colourful as a Beatles film. When the budget bites and I can no longer afford science teachers, this will keep Year 9 going until their GCSEs.
We learnt that the world is noisy, bright and smelly for babies. It is for me too. We each have more cells than in the whole of the Milky Way. And we get the equivalent of a new body every 10 years. Well, I'd like my new one next week. But, unlike Derek, I'll stick with my pick on the wife scene.
Ray Tarleton
Friday, 2 October 2009
Tune in, Switch off - X marks the spot
Imagine the outcry if we did this to kids in assembly. Hugging followed the hanging. It was exploitative and sick. I'm calling Childline
I've changed my phone and broadband provider. The service is fine but I've now seen what it spends my rental on. I'm not paying it to sponsor television that's tacky, tawdry and tasteless. For The X Factor (ITV1) has to be the cruellest blood sport since the Romans threw Christians to lions.
Take Shanna, 18. We have to know their age. Her winning would move her family out of poverty and their council house, offering life chances to all her sisters. Hope in our hands. Still dry-eyed? As she sang, the watching family wept rain clouds, her sisters' faces contorted. By the end, Shanna looked as if she'd been hosed down during a performance of Singin' in the Rain.
Simon Cowell, 49, detected "raw talent". The 2,000-strong audience, proving Derren Brown's "wisdom of crowds" theory a myth, roared approval as this victim avoided being eaten by the lions. And the family hugged and cried some more, desperate for a lifeline to riches. ITV should at least get some well-known tissue manufacturer to be sponsors. It could then be called The Clean X Factor.
I'm really surprised there isn't some child protection legislation to stop us witnessing scenes like the plight of Demi, 17, who sparkily proclaimed that she didn't want to go through just on her character. No danger of that, m'dear. Even her perky personality cracked at the public humiliation of the brutal verdict: "Your voice isn't good enough."
A tragic figure standing alone on the stage, it seemed sweet innocence had been destroyed forever. Imagine the outcry if we did this to kids in assembly. Hugging followed the hanging. If this was fiction, I'd say it was sentimental. But it was real, exploitative and sick. I'm calling Childline.
There's a Ray Bradbury short story I used to teach, set in a future in which reality TV contestants play being hunted to the kill. The winner becomes rich; the rest are slaughtered to audience cheers. Remind you of anything?
The sheer awfulness of many contestants must explain why advertising revenues are down. Several would have been thrown off stage at an infants' karaoke concert. They really were tone deaf, off-key, discordant droners. And they gave Cowell a headache.
Duo Diana, 59, and Jazz, seven, had spent seven years practising for the big night. Diana couldn't sing and her other half stayed mute. Not surprising really as Jazz was a dog, cuddled and mauled around the stage. Now I'm phoning the RSPCA.
I switched on Record Review hoping for some late-night music to soothe. But I'd found the BBC Parliament channel where I discovered the "record" was continuous clips of our legislators passing laws. No wonder Bills have so many readings. MPs rise to speak and everyone laughs and jeers. It could be Comedy Club without the jokes. Or The X Factor audience.
I might form a Society for the Protection of Viewers. And if that original sponsor will back us, they can have my custom again.
Ray Tarleton
I've changed my phone and broadband provider. The service is fine but I've now seen what it spends my rental on. I'm not paying it to sponsor television that's tacky, tawdry and tasteless. For The X Factor (ITV1) has to be the cruellest blood sport since the Romans threw Christians to lions.
Take Shanna, 18. We have to know their age. Her winning would move her family out of poverty and their council house, offering life chances to all her sisters. Hope in our hands. Still dry-eyed? As she sang, the watching family wept rain clouds, her sisters' faces contorted. By the end, Shanna looked as if she'd been hosed down during a performance of Singin' in the Rain.
Simon Cowell, 49, detected "raw talent". The 2,000-strong audience, proving Derren Brown's "wisdom of crowds" theory a myth, roared approval as this victim avoided being eaten by the lions. And the family hugged and cried some more, desperate for a lifeline to riches. ITV should at least get some well-known tissue manufacturer to be sponsors. It could then be called The Clean X Factor.
I'm really surprised there isn't some child protection legislation to stop us witnessing scenes like the plight of Demi, 17, who sparkily proclaimed that she didn't want to go through just on her character. No danger of that, m'dear. Even her perky personality cracked at the public humiliation of the brutal verdict: "Your voice isn't good enough."
A tragic figure standing alone on the stage, it seemed sweet innocence had been destroyed forever. Imagine the outcry if we did this to kids in assembly. Hugging followed the hanging. If this was fiction, I'd say it was sentimental. But it was real, exploitative and sick. I'm calling Childline.
There's a Ray Bradbury short story I used to teach, set in a future in which reality TV contestants play being hunted to the kill. The winner becomes rich; the rest are slaughtered to audience cheers. Remind you of anything?
The sheer awfulness of many contestants must explain why advertising revenues are down. Several would have been thrown off stage at an infants' karaoke concert. They really were tone deaf, off-key, discordant droners. And they gave Cowell a headache.
Duo Diana, 59, and Jazz, seven, had spent seven years practising for the big night. Diana couldn't sing and her other half stayed mute. Not surprising really as Jazz was a dog, cuddled and mauled around the stage. Now I'm phoning the RSPCA.
I switched on Record Review hoping for some late-night music to soothe. But I'd found the BBC Parliament channel where I discovered the "record" was continuous clips of our legislators passing laws. No wonder Bills have so many readings. MPs rise to speak and everyone laughs and jeers. It could be Comedy Club without the jokes. Or The X Factor audience.
I might form a Society for the Protection of Viewers. And if that original sponsor will back us, they can have my custom again.
Ray Tarleton
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